Month: February 2017

The connection between aggressive sexuality, hunting, domestic violence, and fighting?

25th March 2011

Humans are animals who have evolved just like every other organism, with selection favoring particular traits over others.”

Maryanski, A 1994

Fifty years ago, ethnologist Konrad Lorenz placed the human aggressive instinct firmly in the context of animal aggression arguing that human beings share a general instinct for aggressive behavior with other animals. (Wilson, 2006, p. 175) In Demonic Males, Professor Richard Wrangham drawing on his own field observations and examples from a number of other sources explored a similar question. He describes how gangs of male chimpanzees hunt, raid and engage in lethal conflict with other males, often over territory, but they have also been found at times to rape females. These kinds of behavior, are not limited to chimpanzees but are exhibited in one form or another by all primates, especially the great apes. Wrangham believes that these behavioral patterns were developed in the common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans, and that they have persisted through five million years of human evolution to the present day, forming the instinctual basis for much of the inter-group aggression, including warfare, that are exhibited in today’s modern societies. (Wrangham, 1996, p61)

Wrangham writes that, a group of chimpanzees setting off to attack a neighboring male exhibit particular behavioral patterns. In contrast to their typical boisterous conduct, they walk silently through the jungle in single file in what primatologists refer to as a “Border Patrol”. Despite his criticism of Wrangham’s ideas Watts reported similar behavioral observations. Watts says that, when following a group of males, they “will switch into what we call patrol mode. They’ll go silent, which is unusual for chimps, and just look and listen. When they hear neighboring chimps, they respond in a pretty predictable way. If there are just a few chimps in the group, for instance, they’ll quietly move back toward the center of their own territory. If it’s a big group, they’ll respond vocally and listen to the responses. If they decide they are evenly matched, that can lead to major aggression. They’ll chase down, surround, and attack rivals. Sometimes they kill them.” (Watts in King, 2007, pp.14-15) The resulting kill is a “Lethal Raid”. Chimpanzees kill males in other groups to gain access to food in their territory and, by eliminating rival males, increase their chances of sexual selection by preventing them from being able to mate with their females. Sometimes the victor “persuades” the females whose males they have killed to join their group.

During the 1970’s Wrangham and Goodall recorded observations on one particular group of chimpanzees that divided into two distinct factions. The members of one group killed every male and some of the females in the other. The victims had until recently been their companions. (Wrangham, 1996 p. 7; Goodall, 2003) From these observations and others, Wrangham went on to develop a theory that would explain human violence based on the aggression he had witnessed. Beginning by pointing out, that humans are hardly a peaceful species, Wrangham constructed a theory that he calls the Demonic Male Hypothesis, arguing that human males and chimps share a tendency to be aggressive with our closest common ancestor. Humans are related more closely to chimpanzees than chimpanzees are to gorillas, which, Wrangham and Peterson claim allows chimpanzees and other ape species that seem to have changed little in 10 or even 15 million years to be viewed as “time machines,” taking us back to the origins of behavior that we now consider uniquely human. (Wrangham, 1996, p.41-43) Silverberg and Gray however disagree, they state, that there is no single pattern of antagonistic behavior among nonhuman primates and that the importance of dominance, violence, reconciliation and so on varies greatly among different species and among different populations of the same species. (Silverberg & Gray, 1992, p. 24) All agree however that at the very least killing a neighbor reduces competition over resources. (Wrangham 1986, p.165)

How did warfare originate? Was it human genetics? Social competition? The rise of complexity? Intensive study of the long-term hunter-gatherer past brings us closer to an answer. The original chapters in this volume examine cultural areas on five continents where there is archaeological, ethnographic, and historical evidence for hunter-gatherer conflict despite high degrees of mobility, small populations, and relatively egalitarian social structures. Their controversial conclusions will elicit interest among anthropologists, archaeologists, and those in conflict studies.

Despite evidence of warfare and violent conflict in pre-Columbian North America, scholars argue that the scale and scope of Native American violence is exaggerated. They contend that scholarly misrepresentation has denigrated indigenous peoples when in fact they lived together in peace and harmony. In rebutting that contention, this groundbreaking book presents clear evidence—from multiple academic disciplines—that indigenous populations engaged in warfare and ritual violence long before European contact. In ten well-documented and thoroughly researched chapters, fourteen leading scholars dispassionately describe sources and consequences of Amerindian warfare and violence, including ritual violence. Originally presented at an American Anthropological Association symposium, their findings construct a convincing case that bloodshed and killing have been woven into the fabric of indigenous life in North America for many centuries.

The editors argue that a failure to acknowledge the roles of warfare and violence in the lives of indigenous North Americans is itself a vestige of colonial repression—depriving native warriors of their history of armed resistance. These essays document specific acts of Native American violence across the North American continent. Including contributions from anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers, they argue not only that violence existed but also that it was an important and frequently celebrated component of Amerindian life. Continue reading →

Before humans entered the picture, North America had an impressive assortment of large mammals and birds. The herbivores of this megafauna included 3 species of elephants (woolly mammoths, giant mammoths, and mastodons), horses, camels, giant bison, giant ground sloths, giant armadillos, tapirs, giant beaver, giant tortoises (roughly the size of Volkswagon bugs), and a peccary as large as the wild boars of Europe. An entire guild of now extinct mega-predators existed to feed on these large herbivores, including cheetahs, saber-toothed tigers, giant wolves, and two species of lion (one larger than the modern lions of Africa). There also existed a truly fearsome short-nosed bear, about twice the size of a modern grizzly bear, which ran its prey down like modern wolves do. Jaguars lived far north of their current tropical latitudes, into the boreal forests of Canada, as did many of the New World cats now restricted to Central and South America. There also existed a guild of large meat-eating birds, the largest of which were the teratorns, scavengers with wingspans up to five meters. The endangered California condor is the last remnant of these giant scavenger birds. There was even a giant vampire bat adapted to feeding off the blood of these enormous beasts.

The fate of all these species has been the topic of much scientific debate, but the majority of the evidence supports the hypothesis of “Pleistocene Overkill” (Martin and Wright 1967, Flannery 2001). This hypothesis suggests that as humans spread across the two continents, they preyed upon the large herbivores, such as mammoths, ground sloths, and horses, and wiped them out. Such large animals are more vulnerable to extinction than smaller ones because they cannot hide as easily, and because their lower reproductive rates cannot compensate for the losses due to hunting. They also may have had a fearlessness of humans, somewhat like the dodo bird, because these animals evolved with out human presence. When the large herbivores disappeared, their natural predators, such as saber-toothed tigers and short-nosed bears, became extinct as well. The large scavenger bird species, adapted to eating the remains of large animals, then followed into extinction. The California condor may have held on because it had access to the carcasses of marine mammals, which did not suffer high extinction rates at this time. The loss of the megafauna also impacted the diversity of smaller animals. Because large abundant animals (such as mammoths) alter plant communities by their intense grazing practices, their disappearance caused a major shift in the plant communities (e.g., from prairie to forest) resulting in the extinction of many smaller species that depended on the habitats maintained by the large grazers. In fact, there existed a grassland ecosystem in Alaska called the mammoth steppe that disappeared entirely once the woolly mammoth went extinct in that region, which is attributed the change in ecosystem processes that occurred when this keystone herbivore was lost (Flannery 2001).

When faced with the question, “Do you want kids?” many millennials are shrugging and lackadaisically saying “NOPE.”

“NOPE NOPE NOPE.”

After all, long gone are the days when sex was reproductive; where the natural progression after marriage is 2.5 thankless spawn and a white picket fence in suburban hell.

Today’s copulating post-youths are much more interested in their careers and life goals than they are in raising from a larval stage a human money suck, and as a result, our nation’s birth rates are declining.

According to data from the Urban Institute, birth rates among women in their 20s have declined 15 percent between 2007 and 2012, and research from Pew uncovered a longer-term trend of people skirting parenthood — the number of blissfully child-less couples has doubled since 1970, with only about half of women ages 15-44 squeezing some out.

This decline in baby blobs worries some people, like your grandma, in part because there’s still a undying taboo around with people (particularly women) who chose not to procreate. Ladies who choose not to violently blast forth from their uteri a living person have been referred to as “shallow” and “self-absorbed cat ladies,” and even the cool pope has said the decision not to reproduce is fundamentally “selfish.”

Too bad millennials don’t give a flying shit what the cool pope says, even if he did release a rap album.

So, to find out why so many of us are saying “piss off” to parenthood, we sought out some opinions from our readers and friends. The responses are from people of all walks of life, and reveal that there’s quite a plentiful grab-bag of reasons why none of us want little poop machines anymore.

1. The world kinda sucks now.

Sometimes the decision to not be a parent is as simple as wanting to spare a child from having to live in a world of jerks and terrorism and disease and our increasingly shitty ways of communication. There are many times that we ourselves regret being born into the time we were, and we don’t really see the global situation improving enough to want to raise our kids in it. For all we know, there’s going to be some sort of I Am Legend zombie apocalypse any day now and we’ll all have to make suicide pacts with our loved ones to avoid an even gorier death so … no kids allowed.

“As I grow up myself, I realize more and more the kinds of shitty things people are capable of. Kidnapping and rape and bullying and terror and stalking and identity theft and … I could go on. Having experienced a couple of these things myself, it would break my heart knowing I was bringing an innocent child into a world where all that was possible. I feel like I’d have a really hard time not sheltering them or not being overprotective.” – Cammie, 26

“One word: Trump. If that dude wins, I have a really hard time not picturing America as a smoldering nuclear wasteland. That’s no place to raise a child.” – Manuel, 28

2. We’re poor as hell.

In case you haven’t noticed, you have no money.

That would be because millennials are the highest-educated, worst-paid generation ever. We can’t even crawl, bruised and bloody, out of our student debt holes, so how are we supposed to afford the lifetime of cash hemorrhaging having children entails? We could make diapers out of our old vintage band tees maybe … but … no. We love that Devo tee.

In fact, many people we talked to specifically named their student loans as a reason for not being able to afford kids — a trend that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, if the total student debt of the Class of 2015 is to be believed.

“When a kid leaves your body, it costs a pretty $20-30K. I’ve got $52K in student loans to look forward to. That’s negative money I have to feed and clothe and educate a kid. Not trying to bring up a dirt baby.” – Seth, 25

“I’m lesbian, so unless my girlfriend grows a dick and balls, paying for a surrogate or artificial insemination would be a huge medical bill. Dogs are cheaper.” – Drea, 27

“I can’t even live off my pathetic salary, so how can I give a child the life they deserve?” – Micah, 23